The short form: in August of 1865 one Colonel P.H. Anderson of of Big Spring, TN, a former slaver, apparently wrote to one of his former slaves (now living and working – for a paycheck – in Ohio with his family) asking him to come back. The good Col. claimed that he would pay the slave – Jourdan Anderson – a good wage.

That is ballsy. Chutzpah. Audacity. Something along those lines. For a man who *owned* another human being to watch that human being escape to freedom and then ask for that now free man to come *back* is the height of

But perhaps startlingly, Mr. Anderson replied with a dictated letter of surpassing politeness. But as you read along, the “yes massa” tone the letter starts off with gradually grows into a well-crafted FU. Mr Anderson knows what the value of his labor is, now that he’s getting paid for it, so he wants the slaver to provide assurances that he will actually pay off.And what better way to prove his honest intentions than… BACK PAY. Thirty two years at 25 dollars per week – plus twenty years at two dollar per week for his wife, PLUS INTEREST – worked out to $11,680. Which Mr. Anderson could be paid by Adams Express.

There’s going to be a lot of fussing that no ex-slave could write that well. Well, they could and they did. I spent two summers reading letters send to and from slaves — persons I could identify by outside evidence as being enslaved — and about half of them were quite well-written. There was a lot more education of slaves than anyone seems to like to admit. Most of that education was, strictly speaking, against the local laws. But then the Underground Railroad was illegal, too.

Ohio was a destination for slaves because of laws prior to the Civil War: In Virginia (and a couple of other states, I’m told) a freed slave had to leave the state in which he was released, within a year.

Oh, boy! Who wants to fill up your tank of stupid today? The patriarchal race to colonize Mars is just another example of male entitlement NBC News is actually promoting this rubbish. These men, particularly Musk, are not only heavily invested in who can get their rocket into space first, but in colonizing Mars. The […]

The Falcon Heavy is an absurdly low-cost heavy lift rocket F9H in reusable configuration (payload seems to be about 40 tones to LEO) costs $90 million. Fully expendable (64 tons to orbit), it’s $150 million. That sounds like a lot. It’s certainly more than I can afford. But compare it to the competition. The Delta […]

From Those Were The Days… currently on eBay is a truly impressive piece: Douglas Aircraft Co 1960’s Skeletal Wood Model of the C-5 Cargo Proposal LARGE The Buy-It-Now price is a substantial fifteen grand. It shows the internal structure of the Douglas proposal of the CX-HLS, what became the C-5, at fairly large scale. More […]

The Daily Caller points out something obvious: According To The FBI, Knives Kill Far More People Than Rifles In America – It’s Not Even Close As could be expected, after the Parkland school shooting the Civilian Enfeeblement Movement has been freshly reinvigorated. Kids are being used to emotionally agitate for the latest round of gun […]

A tracking website: Where is Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster with Starman? The “Chart” page has an overview of planetary positions w/Roadster that you can view into the future using a slider. Plus… available on Amazon:

This headline is a couple years old, but, wow: German government plans to spend 93.6 billion euros on refugees by end 2020: Spiegel That works out to roughly 20 to 25 billion Euros per year to deal with a problem without actually trying to *end* the problem. Thus it seems that 20 billion euro per […]

“Black Panther” seems like it makes some people a little passionate. Oddly, even though I’m not exactly a Marvel comics fanboy, I’ve caught every Marvel comics movie since “Iron Man” on opening day. Until “Black Panther.” Somehow I seem to have missed that one so far. I think perhaps the excessively matronizing Admiral Holdo in […]

The NERVA nuclear rocket, studied throughout the sixties into the early 1970’s, would have been a great way to propel spacecraft. But a nuclear rocket is not the same sort of reactor as is generally designed for use in space to generate electrical power. A NERVA can produce *gigawatts* of thermal energy, energy which is […]

Well, this is multiple levels of disturbing: Scoop: Skirmish in Beijing over the nuclear football Apparently something a little less than entirely awesome may have occurred when Trump visited China back in November: a US military aide carrying the “nuclear football” was separated by Chinese security officers from the Presidential group. There was a physical […]

A few decades before the “X-Wing” configuration gained a measure of popularity, Hughes Tool Company made a detailed study of a somewhat similar concept, the “rotor/wing.” This was a three-bladed helicopter rotor attached to a large central lifting surface, either a circular disk or a triangular structure. The rotor was not turned the conventional way […]